Are blogs really always as silly and trivial and intellectually vacuous as they sometimes seem, even to me? Well, sure. Even so, no single piece of reporting all year made me feel better about my sabbatical project -- studying blogs -- than this amazing NPR audio-documentary on the explosive growth of blogs in China this year.
Not just the sheer size of the phenomenon. But the content too. Could blogs truly provide all this and more: a growing zone where free speech and discussion can flourish (if only because the phenomenon itself is so enormous the government can't control it); a place where expression of one's own individuality is celebrated (egotisitcal here, revolutionary there); a literary forum where the voices of women, in particular, are not just present in print, but powerfully so. Now that's a technology worth studying, a discourse worth analysis, an emerging new kind of "literature" with worth exploring all year. And beyond. No doubt I'll have more to say when I visit China again next May/June myself. Link: NPR : In China, Blogs Are Revolutionary Tool of Opinion.
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